#post dispair

[lesbiansanemi]

I feel like the people who make those posts that are like “tumblr is so white and so American obviously that’s what most of the users are White Americans is all there is they make up like 90% of my dash” are just…. Telling on themselves

[walkingintheamm]

montoya I'm so sorry your suffering has brought me such joy in meme format 😭😭

[ghoulishr0t]

this mess was yours, now your mess is mine

[kyros-tha-soldier]

[thenamedoesnotmattertome]

Feeling the blues

[boycterium]

I don't think anthy even sealed the prince within her. It was just a lie to ward the angry crowd off him. He was alive and conscious in the barn after she went outside to face them. Her “powers” aren't real, they're only real because people believed they're real for so long. They believe that she holds the power of Dios within her and that's how the power came to her. Anthy was dehumanised by the nation into becoming a fairlytale archetype with magic powers. She's only a witch because they believe her to be

[trans-yllz]

awe wei wuxian being proud of jiang cheng 🤧

[tickldpnk8]

Distant Mirrors Reread: Three Septembers and a January

One of the things that Gaiman does in his works is that he ties in real people and real events. And to me, it makes all of the fantastical seem ordinary and believable. This issue builds off of one of those things. There really was an Emperor Norton, but here we see what might have inspired his “madness” …if the Endless were to exist.

In any case, this issue packs a lot of sibling dynamics, so let’s get started.

On family dynamics:

The whole issue starts out with Despair attending to Norton. Despair contemplates Norton at his lowest and calls on Dream to attend to her. She then challenges Dream to a contest over whether his “little dreams” can redeem Norton or not.

Now, the first time I read it, I read it as the challenge was started out of competition/jealousy and anger/goading. And I still see that. But this time it struck me more like Despair trying to save Norton from suicide at the very least or as her trying to engage Morpheus in life again.

This is what she says right before calling for Dream:

And once the competition has started, Death makes it sound as though the three youngest tend to play these games with mortal lives when she admonishes Dream. This confirms that the older three don’t really interfere in mortal lives. At least as much as the younger 3 do.

The younger three seem to pick fights over who “owns” a mortal at a given time. And I think this relates to how mortals tend to pass in and out of their domains: Desire (want/indifference), Despair (sadness/hope) and Delirium (insanity/lucidity). Meanwhile, Destiny, Death and Dream are all inevitable if you are living. (Sure minor aspects of the oldest three might be something you pass in and out of, but not their larger functions.)

And as the contest plays out, we see each of them try to tempt Norton away from Dream’s sway. Which means we get to see Delirium and Morpheus interact:

I love how these two interact. Morpheus has such tender interactions with his sister. He’s gentle with her: more gentle than with any of this other younger siblings. Even when she’s opposing him in a contest or later on in the series when she annoys him. But despite that, she always finds him to be scary and continually comments on it. This is the first time she tells him she thinks he’s scary in my reread so I want to note it here.

On their missing sibling:

So we still don’t have a name for this missing brother who keeps getting referenced. I had to reread this all carefully because I could have sworn they mention his name, but they don’t.

The only things we know for certain are that he left and that it was his decision. But Despair is able to goad Dream into taking the bet by blaming him for the Prodigal leaving. She claims that Morpheus’ superiority complex is directly to blame for their brother leavjng. That Morpheus didn’t care about their brother and he doesn’t care about the rest of the younger ones either.

Nothing could get Morpheus to take the bet as well as this argument: it directly attacks his pride and also his strong sense of responsibility/guilt. Death sees it differently and reassures him that their brother left due to his own decision. Death seems to have the scolding older sister but down to a tee. I’m sure she’s had a lot of these conversations over the years.

Literary tie in:

And it wouldn’t be a Sandman arc if it didn’t have a literary reference. And here we get Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain! A nice little cameo. His Royal appointment from Emperor Norton happens as Dream and Delirium have their little chat nearby. So is it a coincidence that it’s worded as “…is made by Royal appointment, official spinner of tales and teller of stories to these United States of America.” It leaves me wondering if Norton wasn’t inspired by Dream to gift this proclamation.

Last, but not least, foreshadowing:

Here we see what a sore loser Desire can be when they lose a bet. Their ostentatious plan of bringing someone back from the dead to tempt Norton backfires. When Morpheus remarks that it wasn’t really very subtle, Desire vows to not only come up with a subtle plan, but to bring the Kindly Ones down on his head.

In Conclusion

So in the end, what Lesson was it that Morpheus imparted to his siblings? That great meta post leaves it up to interpretation. But I personally think that it shows the permanency of dreams in our lives. Despite how transient the dreams we experience in the Dreaming may be, the Dreams we have about ourselves or about our future are so integral to who we are as mortals.

It’s a great last line to leave this arc on. Because over the course of this arc we’ve seen the power of dreams in shaping revolutions, nations, and shaping one’s self. We’ll come back to this theme with the last issue in Distant Mirrors when we get to Ramadan in a bit. For now, Book 2 continues with Orpheus. So that’s up next.

[captain-krow-drozdov]

Some People In My Family (Excluding My Mom Who Is An Agent Of Chaos And Will Choose Alliance Over Letting The AI Win) Play Monopoly Like It's A Gladiator Ring. No Humour To Be Found, There Is Only The Bloodlust Of Victors And The Broken Bodies Of Their Victims Beneath Their Feet.

Then There's Me Who Is Just Vibin™ Acting Like I've Been Shot Every Time I Land On An Owned Property Only To End Up Owning Half The Board And Lovingly Calling It The Pain-Bow.

[froget-me-nots]

"do you like her?"

"she's my daughter now"

[coffeekaspbrak]

listening to vapor wave genuinely getting sad thinking about what the future could have been. i’m sorry to my teenage self.

[gothdyke222]

the annoyance men bring me is almost impossible to even fathom

[kyuroon]

So like? Are we all feeling like we'll never actually achieve anything meaningful in our lives?

Are we all being crushed under the weight of the existential dread that comes with the knowledge of our own insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe or is that just me?

[ethereal-string]

What would I be. What have I become. Dispair, swallow me whole.

[a-nam]

Oooooooo we r really in it now

[infamouslydorky]

The increase of American horror media featuring aesthetics from post ww2 prosperity is a form of expressing the disillusionment of the American dream in modern times; of how the fanciful googie ideals of a hopeful nuclear family aesthetic falls apart in the face of the reality of dispairing modern times. In this essay, I will-