#honestly im inclined to go with the first explanation bc we know death CAN refuse to take souls

[onehundredandeleventropicalfish]

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