#gilbert the sandman

[tickldpnk8]

Comic Issue #14 – Collectors

You all! How do I keep ending up with the serial killer episodes?? @writing-for-life and I have even switched off weeks to suite our schedules! I swear, it’s uncanny. In any case, welcome to yet another Tome Thursday (or Friday depending on your timezone with this late update). I’m excited for us to discuss Collectors this week! Here, we finally see the Cereal Convention. So without further ado…

Discussion Prompts

Character Analysis

Who is victim and who is predator in this issue? Can someone be both? Neither?

We start to learn more about Gilbert’s backstory in this issue: how does his character evolve in this issue? Is he as brave as he first appeared in earlier issues?

Themes and Motifs

Murder puns abound in this issue: do you have a favorite?

Is Rose an active or passive character: how does this relate to her as the Vortex?

Narrative Depth and Emotional Impact

This issue includes a framing device with the wind blowing in…how effective do you find this narrative bookend?

Thoughts on Rose’s peril in this episode? This is the second time we find her in danger.

Art

We see a change in art style when Gilbert tells his story: which of the 2 styles do you prefer?

What is your favorite Panel/Page?

What the heck is going on with this cover image? How do you interpret it?

Symbolism and Imagery

Did you catch this week’s DC cameo (or lack thereof)?

The Cereal Convention is a spoof on real conventions…how does it compare to any you have attended?

Synopsis

A convention convenes…but not just any convention: a “Cereal” convention. Rose just happens to be at the hotel and is missing Jed and waiting. In her boredom, Gilbert tells her the original story of Little Red Riding Hood. 

Meanwhile, the Corinthian pulls up to the hotel. Nimrod is in serach of the Family Man when the Corinthian shows up and Nimrod offers him the Guest of Honor billing. Later, an author at Chaste gets into more trouble than he bargained for and Gilbert recognizes an old colleague. Rose determines there is something odd about the convention party she crashes. 

The next morning, Gilbert is missing and Rose runs afoul of Funland, who breaks convention protocol. Morpheus comes when summoned by Rose. The Corinthian makes a speech and comes off worse for the wear in a confrontation with his maker. Gilbert reappears with Jed in his arms and the convention’s attendees scatter into the night.

[marvelsgirl616]

Gilbert Icon | The Sandman Season 1

[sarcasticamaleont]

@indigocatpaws

Lmaoooo

What did my poor man Gilbert (Fiddler's Green) did to deserve those two idiots boning all over him on the fanfics? 😭

(clean image of them below)

[fishfingersandscarves]

some sandmanning

[missmacfire]

New Ferdie bts!! 👀👀‼️

[journalofabird]

"To love is loving the unlovable, to forgive means pardoning the unpardonable.

Faith means believing the unbelievable and hope means hoping, even when everything seems hopeless."

- Fiddler's Green

[tickldpnk8]

Don’t bury this nugget in the notes @ilikesubwaysfeel!

ID: #yes!!!!!!!! #also think Fiddler’s Green/Gilbert’s refusing to be remade at the end of The Wake bc his death has given the life he’s lived meaning #probably also ties into the wider point about the importance of endings #the sandman

To Be Human Means to Die (Even for Morpheus)

I know one of the biggest points of contention in the Sandman fandom (especially between show-only and graphic novel fans) is the end:

On the regular, we all hear the wish that the ending should have been more hopeful, that Morpheus dying is soul-crushing and devastating and sends the wrong message. And while I agree that it is incredibly sad upon first read (I actually cried my eyes out many moons ago when I first read World’s End, because that’s when I knew, without a doubt, what was going to happen), I would like to expand a bit on why I think we are actually getting the most hopeful message of them all…

It’s a Tragedy: Yes, but That’s Also Simplifying It

Let me briefly talk about tragedies first, because many people, myself included, often bring up the purpose of a tragedy first when we are talking about why realistically, there can be no other ending to The Sandman than the one we already have. That purpose is that we, as the audience/reader, are supposed to do better, and that we are supposed to learn from our hero’s fatal flaw(s).

And while all of this is true, it is also too simple.

Yes, Morpheus has fatal flaws, his inherent rigidity being the most prominent of them (on that rigidity, everything else hinges: his occasional cruelty, his sense of responsibility even if it destroys him, his inability to hold down relationships because he won’t communicate and compromise…).

But it would be too easy to say: “This is what we are supposed to learn from it, let’s not do that and instead be capable of change. Lesson learned, the end”.

For me, the most important personal truth of The Sandman goes far beyond that, and it is connected to the through-line:

Gods Can Die and Humans Can Be Immortal

When we first meet Morpheus, he is Endless in the truest sense of the word—although captured, it is very clear that he is not mortal, not human, and one step further: That he also doesn’t always understand what it means to be human. We get to know him as aloof, arrogant, proud, often devoid of empathy, and even cruel. And we all know that this changes throughout his arc. That the being who always asserted he is incapable of change finally has to admit, to himself and others, that he has changed, most poignantly in The Kindly Ones (e.g. when he tells Nuala that he lied to Ishtar when he denied he had changed).

And that change was initially a slow one--perhaps that is why he denied it for so long. But by the time we arrive at the end of Brief Lives, his change and, yes, his humanity, are already so clear to the reader that most of us probably went: “You really are slow on the uptake sometimes.”

Even Frank McConnell writes in his intro to The Kindly Ones: “And with [killing Orpheus], Dream has entered time, choice, guilt and regret—has entered the sphere of the human.” And Nuala is right when she asks him: “You want them to punish you, don’t you? You want them to punish you for Orpheus’ death.” Guilt, regret, and a choice. And his reply is silence, and it’s deafening.

On Becoming Human

By the end of The Kindly Ones, Morpheus basically is human in (maybe even more than) the metaphorical sense: He feels like a human, and even his body (or at least his relationship to his body) has changed. The most important indication for the latter is when we put in contrast that the Corinthian stabbing him in Collectors doesn’t draw a single drop of blood, but the scorpion whip of the Fates in The Kindly Ones does, and that scar remains. We can of course argue about who can hurt him and who can’t, but in either case, we see a Morpheus now who is more flesh and blood than he has ever been, and he feels a sense of mortality not only mentally/emotionally, but also physically.

(I have to throw in here that the change they made in the show at this point greatly confused me, and I think it is significant, as are a lot of other changes that have been made. And I personally hope they only use them to hint at a more human side to him from the outset to make us relate more, but not as a change to the whole arc. I will admit that I would have preferred if he didn’t bleed at this point because to me, it would have had more impact when we finally do see him bleed at the end. And we got foreshadowing for the scar in the show, when the earthquakes crack one of the windows and he looks through it for the second time. Yeah, I’m really that obsessive when I rewatch it, it’s embarrassing).

To Be Human Means to Die

And before we all collectively go into our evolutionarily ingrained wish to pretend that’s not true (because most of us fear death):

It is our mortality that gives our lives meaning. Without an end, life has no meaning bar feeling empty responsibility (or endless hedonism that gets boring at some point). And after 10 billion years, maybe the burden of that responsibility simply becomes too heavy (“But even the freedom of the Dreaming can be a cage, of a kind, my sister,” he says to Death in #69. And that he is “very tired”). It can’t make up for what truly makes our lives worth living:

The Impermanence of it.

Destruction got it right when he said that the illusion of permanence basically depends on our vantage point. That we can pretend if we so wish, and that there is comfort to be found in that, but that things simply don’t last. And that the Endless are truly no exception to that rule (“…even our existences are brief and bounded. None of us will last longer than this version of the universe.”)

And yet, we look at Morpheus choosing death and think: ”But that’s it then, he can't go back on that, but he deserved happiness because he has changed, he deserved (insert preference/head-canon of choice) and will never get a chance to have it now.”

And I get it. Psychologically speaking, we often fight the idea of death tooth and nail. We fear our own, and we have to deal with the loss of loved ones. So the denial is real—it’s not one of the stages of grief for nothing. But staying in that stage of denial is stagnation—the very antithesis of change. Death and change are linked—in the Sandman, they are not truly presented as alternatives, even if we might think so. They are two sides to the same coin. Death says to her mortal form in The High Cost of Living that the fact that life ends is what gives it meaning. That’s why it always ends. And that message has already been given to us in The Wake: “(Death) gives you peace. She gives you meaning. And she bids her brother goodbye.”

It’s Not Just About Dying, It’s Also About Coping With Grief

It tells us something about our own mortality, but also about mourning our loved ones. That’s why The Sandman doesn’t end with Morpheus’ death/The Kindly Ones, but we get a whole story arc after he is gone/The Wake. Because mortality isn’t just about us. It is also about the ones we love, the ones we need to let go while keeping on living, but we also hold on to them in certain ways (“humans can be immortal” because we make them so). All the mourners are us, and in the case of grieving Morpheus, many of us are probably a bit like Matthew:

In the throes of grief, we don’t care that there might be someone else who might even be more kind and loving (poor Daniel)—we don’t want a “replacement”, we want back what we have lost. And we are not ready to move on, until we somehow are/do. And that path is painful and long, as everyone who ever lost a loved one will be able to attest to. The pain never truly goes away, but it changes, from something so raw and painful that it knocks the air out of your lungs, to something that shows up here and there unexpectedly, still painful, but a little less so. Until it only hurts around the edges of memories that make us smile, miss and love someone, all at once. That love is permanent, even if life is not. It doesn’t really die with us either, because we can pass it on.

And it is somewhat fitting that the idea of “to be human means to die”, and that death is what gives life meaning, also extends to storytelling:

Without an end, a story has no true meaning. Our lives are stories, and every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Morpheus’ story is meaningful because it has an end (I already wrote about this before in “Why the order of the last three issues of The Sandman matters” and have attached a long reblog chain)—not because it plods on endlessly (no pun intended). And that end is exactly what makes it last, what makes people feel, reflect, understand, learn, pass it on.

We, a whole fandom. continuously talk about how upset we are that he died, what we learned from it, what we would do differently (be that in our own lives or in a retelling of the story), and I’ll just leave it at that, because it drives the message home so much more than any further exploration could….

[tampire]

That’s enough Cereal Convention for today

[designtheendless]

🌿 “It was a privilege being human with you”🌿

[rexwrendraws]

happy six months to vol 1 of the into the dreaming zine!! to celebrate, here's some of the promo art i did last year that i dont think ive posted by itself yet :)

[thoughtsfromlayla]

Lucienne: I'm pulling you over for carrying 2 major arcana on the back of a singular, large raven because it's illegal

Morpheus, looking back at Corinthian and Gilbert: Wait, two?

Corinthian: Oh my fucking god, Gault fucking fell off (into the shadow realm)

[marvelsgirl616]

🤏🏻

[zzoomacroom]

The Sandman + Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt quotes (part 2)

Part 1

[writing-for-life]

Fiddler’s Green—Nekroticism Illustration (Raquel Diez)

Every time someone draws Gilbert, I weep with joy. He’s such an important character and gets forgotten about so often…

[lunathew1tch]

Masterlist of things that are in what I call my 'hyperfixation cycle' because my autistic ass likes making useless lists and i like to cycle through my hyperfixations periodically like a weirdo

The Magnus Archives

Dan and Phil

Welcome to Nightvale

WILD/CARD and their members

Night Mind

Welcome Home

Horror unfiction generally

Good Omens (and actors)

The Sandman (and actors)

Neil Gaiman (and his other unlisted works)

Tarot

Dimension 20/ game changer/ dropout.tv in general

Brian David Gilbert