#in the one case where she does opt for 'vaporizing' Dream reacts exactly as Neil noted he would

[lightdancer1]

One of the reasons for my string of 'Death rescues Dream and it goes badly wrong stories'

Is to deal with one of Neil's other points. The Endless are not, in fact, trained superheroes. They aren't trained fighters, either. Death has immense raw power but has never really tried to use it in the ways she does, and in the one scenario where it goes off flawlessly there are completely different problems that come from it.

In reality even a complete idiot like Roderick Burgess, gift-wrapped the most blatantly obvious set of wedges and divide and conquer, would be able to make use of them. And in my scenarios he very much does, because even he could see something that blindingly obvious if it was in front of his face, and since Death is the most human-like of the Endless and loving and forgiving to a fault it almost never occurs to her to either lie or just disintegrate him. To any others of her siblings there'd be less of a deal and more 'the beatings will continue until compliance ensues'. With Death, OTOH, she really does act like a human big sister worried about her little brotjher, and that can go very badly in the right circumstances (or the wrong ones).

The flip side of it is that Death's very humanity also means that circumstances that did have measurable and horrific effects on Dream didn't have quite the same effects as while time passes like it does for mortals, Dream isn't human in his psychology or personal-emotional-metaphysical makeup in the way Death is. Solitary confinement affects Death very much like it does human beings, because this is one of many, many ways where being humanlike bites her in the ass in ways that it wouldn't any of her far less human siblings.