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Sandman
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NEW EP JUST DROPPED!
Dream of cats and Callipoe!
On my birthday! Life is good!
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I guess it’s good I’ve been dragging my feet on wrapping up my thoughts on the series, then.
@BloodAngel Happy birthday.
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@BloodAngel omg omg omg omg happy and happy I didn’t know they were going to release more!!!
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Was going to post a link, but then figured it might contain spoilers. It was one Neil Gaiman had posted on his FB page.
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Well. If they had to depict the SA scene, I’m glad they did it with a camera zoom onto a word processor screen and an ugly musical sting.
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@GF Thank you!
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I just watched the new episode.
And I also made the mistake of reading two articles about the new episode after the fact, one written by a man, one written by a woman.
The episode was lovely. The articles… have me expecting that any conversation about Calliope’s story is going to be dominated by a very specific subset of male comic nerds who are too fucking stupid to even understand what happened, let alone be entitled to write paid think-pieces about it in popular media.
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@Aria Well now you gotta share the link. I am in the mood to see if I will laugh or get angry.
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@GF Have you read the comics? Because it’s VERY spoilery if not.
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@Aria I have. I’m very familiar with the story.
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@GF Well in that case, here we go.
The article bothers me because it’s so completely reductive about Calliope’s story, glossing over it almost entirely save to explain how it affects the men involved and Dream in particular. I find the last few paragraphs especially egregious because the author literally argues that before Morpheus had a Big Big Sad (which is tragic and horrific, but not the focus of this episode or what’s going on with Calliope), his real problem is that he cares too much and is just a sensitive soul who has always felt things too deeply.
Because, y’know, what he did to Nada at pretty much the dawn of humanity was just a real tragedy for him, I guess? And not, y’know, that he’s been a bit of a melodramatic, self-obsessed knob who is terrible at relationships since basically the dawn of time, to the point that even his sister is all “Dream, love. Petal. Pumpkin. My dearest bro-bro. Pull your head out of your ass for, like, five minutes.”
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@Aria I was first struck by how it’s just kind of badly written. I’m sure he thinks lines like “After bonding over their mutual bondage” are clever, but they just come off as clunky. I don’t even know what he means about writing in blood saving on the electric bill.
But yeah, his assessment of Morpheus is pretty shallow and idealized. He does not seem to understand that Morpheus has a lot of toxic masculinity he needs to deal with, especially in the story about sex slavery of a goddess where those traits are thematically resonant. I don’t expect a random dude writing wiki-style summaries of comic book plots to have a solid foundation in feminist theory, but this guy does need to improve his media literacy.
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@GF I am profoundly disturbed that the man claims to specialize in LGBTQIA+ media. I saw that and I reflexively said, “…Please don’t.” Like, out loud.
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The way I always read it is that the true tragedy of the story is Morpheus wants to be better. He can be better. He has it in him; there are moments where he is genuinely… well, human.
But he’s also such an asshole. Too proud, too stubborn, too stuck in his ways. He’s good enough to make people care for him and then he fucks them over when they do - sometimes because they do.
He knows this. He wants to change. He can’t.
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@Arkandel I wonder how the show will go, given that the comic is about him being unable to change and the show keeps talking about how much he already has changed.
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A good clarification there imho is that it isn’t that he can’t change, it’s that he can’t change enough and ultimately – without getting too spoilery here – the consequences of his fuckery catch up to him in the end, and he gets his comeuppance pretty unambiguously. As far as I understand it the show will probably stick to the plot from the comic there, because it’s great.
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@Arkandel I wonder how the show will go, given that the comic is about him being unable to change and the show keeps talking about how much he already has changed.
The parts in the show about how his imprisonment changed him were also in the comics to varying extents, to my memory. It’s not unique to the show.
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@Wizz Yep! And that’s kind of the fun part of all this.
I love flawed, imperfect but likable characters and Morpheus absolutely fits this bill. He can be (and is, often) both the hero and the villain of this story.
I’m rooting for him not because he’s a great person but because he has it in him to be one. And when he fails my expectations, when he comes >this< close to meeting his potential but completely fucks it up so badly, well, that’s why it’s so much fun.
It’s a great role.
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@Roz @Wizz Yeah, there are lines peppered throughout the series about him having changed, most of which he denies, as I recall. Not to get spoilery, but the whole incident that ultimately brings about his previously mentioned comeuppance is an attempt to undo change and return his life to something it used to be.
In the TV show, he seems to be embracing his own change more than I remember happening in the source material, which isn’t a bad thing. I don’t like slavishly faithful media translations anyway. I just wonder how it’s going to play out with this new take on the material.
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@GF Frankly while Neil Gaiman himself is so directly involved in it I’m not worried. It’s been very clear he’s not just a passive passenger in this production but has a lot of input in what’s going on.
This is his baby.
