Welcome
Hi everyone, welcome to my blog focused on my obssession with The Sandman and on my Sandman fanfics. I like Dreamling the most, but have written other stuff too.
My AO3 profile is here.
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Mike Driver
Cosimo Galluzzi

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Cosmic Funnies
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art blog(derogatory)
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Misplaced Lens Cap

Kiana Khansmith
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@aetheltrythh
Welcome
Hi everyone, welcome to my blog focused on my obssession with The Sandman and on my Sandman fanfics. I like Dreamling the most, but have written other stuff too.
My AO3 profile is here.
Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass it on to some other writers if you like. Let’s spread the self-love 💜 (i personally hate these sorts of chain-letter things, so no pressure, but i do like to know which of their works a given author particularly loves, so consider this an opportunity to celebrate your work!)
Thanks for the ask :-). I like best:
To Sleep Forever
Take Me In Your Loving Ropes
The fine medieval disciplines of king-fuckery and running in chainmail (not necessarily in that order
and
Married to the Prince of Melancholy
On the Origin of Dream's Raven Kink
I've finished a new fic, you can read it also on AO3. Thanks to @tryan-a-bex for beta reading :-).
Summary
Dream of the Endless has not always had a raven. Not until he got the raven kink from a cave woman named Lusyjen.
Notes:
With a story like this, every word is a potential trap for some sort of historical inaccuracy, so, kindly suspend your disbelief and let's go!
Prologue
"Dream of the Endless always has a raven," Lucienne says, tilting her head, brimming with concern, as I am about to leave for the Waking again, standing on the pier at the sea of dreams and nightmares.
No, not always. You forget. It has been long.
You were the first one and after you, I could not do without a raven.
Only now, I must. It is a fair story that you are trying to tell me, but "Jessamy was the last."
I could not protect her. It is as if a part of me died. Yet another part. If the pain of it will ever pass, I do not know, although I am aware that all memories dull with time, even mine. The bond was... strong. I spent much time looking at the world through her eyes. I know what she would tell me if she was here now and discarded her usual diplomacy. That I should get out more. Use my own eyes. That I do not really need her. But I do. Company is a rare thing. I think you are here for something else, I can still hear Hob's voice in my mind. I am loath to admit it but I do yearn for something, someone. Perhaps I should put more trust in Lucienne, if not in anyone else. Though I am not sure whether I know how. Whether I ever have. She told me she did not feel abandoned when the Dreaming started to crumble and the library was lost to her. But she must have felt... lonely. And yet she remained, even if she could have crossed to the Waking.
I must find a way to make it up to her. Alleviate her burden. Otherwise, there may come a day when everything is too much, even for her.
She does not see my hands tremble as I face away from her and the sea parts before me.
Lucienne
45,000 years ago in what is today mainland Greece (and remember folks, this is the Ice Age).
The nights grow longer; another season of cold and snow is nigh. I know that I will not...would not...last through it. My tribe knows that too. Nobody has said anything, but when we arrive in a deep valley wherein lies a cave that I hold most sacred - and therefore, they do too - we stop. Shelters are built among the trees in front of the cave. We... they...will be here for days after....
I am not afraid. Or am I?
When the preparations are done, four of the men carry me inside, where a fire burns already. I can no longer smell the salt and fish in the air from the sea - the great water that one cannot drink - as I could outside. It is not far. Shadows would lengthen for maybe one ell before one would arrive at its shore. I am fond of the sea though it is also dreadful. They lay me down on a flat stone covered by several layers of fur. Many years ago, my mother and I put paintings on these walls. Ravens and wolves. Facing my father's and brother's red deer and horses painted in red ochre. They are still there, but now I can barely see them. My eyes have weakened to the point of not being able to find herbs in woods and meadows, making me rely on my nose. My remaining teeth are worn out. I can only eat, with difficulty, the most tender meat and berries and mushrooms. My joints are painful and swollen when walking from sunrise to sunset. Hunting is a thing of the past. I have lost half of my hair and I know that there is some foulness in my blood. I have lived much longer than most. Perhaps it is a thing that happens when one has seen too many winters. The cold consumes the soul's strength coursing in one's veins. I am the wise woman of my tribe, a wosa, and yet there is so much I do not know.
I thumb the cave lion teeth hanging from a flax string around my neck. They have as many notches in them as all fingers and toes of two healthy people together. For as long as I can remember, I have been making a notch for every time that the snow melted and birches and oaks sprouted new leaves, heralding the spring and the coming abundance of food. My finger stops on the second notch of the oldest tooth, yellowed by time; that was when I first encountered ravens. Magnificent black birds, their feathers shiny like water flowing over rocks. None of us has seen such as them in the land from which we journeyed, in need of more space and more game. Others of my tribe thought them croaking, but to me, they spoke. Not in words, precisely, but in visions and feelings. Two ravens have been following me ever since. The elders did not believe me. I was too young for such things, they said. A few years later, when I crafted a lightweight spear with an antler tip as I saw it in a vision of other people making it - I observed them as if I was perched on a tree right above them - the elders shook their heads. A child's toy, they said. A spear must be thick and have a stone tip, they said. When I returned to our settlement with a deer so large I could barely carry it, they began paying attention.
A pair of ravens now wait silently outside the cave for my last flight. As usual, they have been given the best meat from this morning's kill in sacrifice. And eyes. They need them for their farsight. I can feel their contentment. They will mourn me but they know that all things must end. As did their predecessors; they are not the first ones. It is only natural and proper. My niece and nephew begin to play their flutes made of mute swan bone. Another notch on the first tooth calls me to touch it. That was the year I first saw the strange man-shaped spirit in my dreams. I have seen him many times after but he never spoke and I never told anyone about him. He would not have approved of that, I felt. But I know that it is he who has been helping me to guide shards of people's souls back to their bodies. It is an easy thing for a soul-part to wander off into the unseen realms after a terror or loss. Not so easy to lead it back where it belongs. I have also been reconciling the malevolent spirits that cause pains and ailments. But that too, has its bounds. I can no longer lure them away from myself.
I open my eyes. The man-shaped spirit stands two steps from the foot of my stone bed as if called by my thoughts. Even though he has never appeared to me outside of the dreamworld, even here, I am the only one who sees him. The others but avoid the space where he is standing. He is nothing like men of the waking world; his face is smooth like a young woman's, skin without a fault, as light as the palest seashell. No one has that, not my kin, not any people I have heard of in the countless trading circles I took part in. And then there are his eyes... I grew accustomed to them and they are kind but the colour is all wrong. Blue as the sea in sunlight. And yet, they are beautiful. He looks sorrowful, more than usual, but even so, the corners of his lips move slightly upwards when he looks at me and nods. I shut my eyes again.
The men of my tribe approach me one by one, touching my arms and shoulders, then fanning out towards the light coming from the cave entrance. The women do the same, only, they take positions in the opposite direction, heading further into the darkness and its heart; there is a passage there, leading down to a cavern with a lake where rocks hang from the roof like the limbs of the sea creatures that have so many of them. The women are to guide my soul into the shadows before it can enter another world, if the Great Mother wills it so. I would perhaps welcome it.
A vision that I have had for a long time bothers me as I have never been able to truly grasp it. Perhaps I will when I join my ancestors. I have been making signs, not only on my lion teeth, but on countless bones, on cave walls, on wood, and in the dirt. To mark the passage of the moon and the sun, to imitate what animal footprints and herb leaves look like and thus capture their essence to persist long after I am dead. But what if there was more than that? A way to keep our songs and the stories that we tell when sitting at the evening fire. The earliest ones I have heard are long gone from my memory. I wish they weren't.
I breathe slowly. I am ready. Almost no one dies like this, without much pain. I am lucky. My chest is heavy and I fall into the warm embrace of sleep.
***
When I wake, I know that I have left my body, irrevocably. Sitting up, I look around myself. Still in a cave, but it is different. This one has an even higher ceiling and a large opening through which a myriad of stars are shining. At the sides, several fires are burning, each of a different colour. I touch my feet slowly to the ground. Sand. I look to the far end of the cave.
"Welcome in my realm and in my abode, Lusyjen." The pale spirit hasn't opened his mouth, but I can hear his words all the same. His first words to me. "Come closer." He sits in a stone seat, several steps above the floor, black fur with long hair from an animal unknown to me wrapped around his bare shoulders, legs covered with a sort of black-hide leggings, the reason for which I cannot understand as his dwelling is summer-warm. No matter, the ways of otherworldly beings are incomprehensible. They have their own reasons for everything and their moods are volatile. Behind him, gemstone crystals are protruding from the wall, larger and clearer than all the stones that traders have ever brought before me.
I come to stand still at the foot of the steps. What he is, I do not know even now. Not a spirit of forests or rivers. Not of the mountains or the sea. Something larger than that still. Perhaps the Moon himself. The pale guardian of night and sleep, clothed in the colour of raven feathers.
I bow my head as he descends to me. Not knowing how to address him properly, now that he has decided to use words, in my mind, I conjure a vision of wolves honouring the night and the moon with their howls, of the silent wings of night owls, and of children fast asleep in their mothers' arms.
He gently lifts my chin and looks into my eyes. "You may wonder why you are here. It is within my power to offer you residence in the Dreaming and my protection, as you died in your sleep." The Dreaming...that's what he calls this other world then. The whole of it is...his? Observing me with curiosity, he sits upright, hands planted firmly on the sides of his seat. Then he leans slightly leans forward. "In turn, I would ask you to be my messenger and my eyes and ears in the waking world."
"Yrshaya," I say; a word for someone of great esteem and status. "It would be my honour."
One does not refuse a call to serve a being such as him.
"Very well." He smiles in a small, secretive way. Something stirs in my chest... I have never had children but I would offer my protection to him too, however insignificant it may be, as I would protect and care for a young one. He is so thin. Like we sometimes are after a season of poor hunting. "You may choose any form that you like. A woman. A man. An animal. Anything in between. You are no longer bound to mortal flesh."
For a little while, I think about it, but I have no real doubt.
"A raven."
And then, I am much smaller and I have wings. Extending them, I look at my new feathers and try to flap them. They lift me into the air and I land on the nearest thing - the spirit's shoulder - which is also a very good place to be. He angles his head towards me and strokes my back lightly.
This gives me the boldness to ask, "Do you have a name, yrshaya? I should like to know, if I am to serve you."
His voice rumbles at the back of my head and when it does, there is no space for anything else. "Not a name like yours. But. I am known. As. Dream of the Endless. The Prince of Stories. And the Shaper of Forms."
Dream.
What Endless might be, I cannot grasp. All things must end, and begin, again and again. But I know now that I have always been his creature. It is right. I am skilled at moving in the dreamworld and bringing back stories to tell men and women to heal them. I know the Waking and the seen and unseen paths of people and animals, even though I yearn to learn more.
I cannot resist carding through his hair with my beak and brushing my head softly against his cheek. Sitting down on the steps with a sigh, he lets me.
Notes
I have done quite a lot of research for such a short fic, but still, there is probably a lot of bullshit. A good things is that no one who has lived in that time is going to read it, so hopefully, no one will be personally offended :D. Unless we have a paleolithic Hob Gadling among us.
The climate was much colder in the Ice Age than it is today, even in the Mediterranean. Hence the concern with winter.
I do not know where the word wosa came from According to ChatGPT, it's not from any known language, so I hope I haven't stolen it from some work of fiction. If so, please tell me.
I set the story at the beginning of the upper paleolithic transition, which is supposed to be the beginning of 'modern' humanity. It looks like we have started to think in new ways and do lots of new shenanigans. See for example this video by John Vervaeke from cca 00:26:00
The common notion is that women in hunter-gatherer societies did not hunt, just gather, but it’s not that clear anymore. They actually may have.
Regarding blue eyes, that would be shocking at the time. Literally no one had that, the trait started to develop from around 10,000 years ago. Regarding light skin colour, it is my understanding that even in people who migrated to northern regions such as Europe and Asia, at this point, it wouldn't have had time to develop. Dream is supposed to look like to the person who sees him, but I did this to emphasize that Lucienne can see his otherworldliness.
I am horrible, I just had to dress Dream in pre-historic leather pants and some spectacular fur over bare chest and shoulders :-).
The question is, when does Lucienne become the librarian? If it's with the invention of cuneiform, she'll have to wait for quite a bit before her vision comes true...
Reblogging this for the 2024 Dream Librarian Day.
Time for some dreamling crack! I apologize for the length, it got out of control. Destiny is done. He's just done, okay? He's had enough of his parents who were never there, siblings who are constantly up to some shit, and his ultra-serious job with no vacations. Moreover, being constantly chained to a book (especially when it's such a huge and heavy book) sucks. So, one day he makes an ultimate decision to go on a holiday into some remote galaxy for a century or two, but first, he needs to complete one task that he actually assigned to himself. Technically, he's not supposed to intervene and all that cosmic bullshit, but he's Destiny, and that's his destiny, pun intended. He's the CEO! The year is 1389. Destiny calls Death and tells her they need to go to Dream asap. She's surprised and slightly worried but obeys without questions. Dream is even more surprised - Destiny normally never visits, so the circumstances must be exceptional. Which they are. Destiny is in no mood for pleasantries and gets straight to the business, informing Dream that he needs to get laid for the common good. Dream bluescreens, and so does Death. 'I beg you pardon?' Dream blinks. Destiny never jokes, and he must have misheard… But Destiny, in his impassive, 100% serious tone, repeats that Dream does need to get laid. To prevent the deaths of thousands of dreamers in the 20th century, to prevent the grudge with hell, to save multiple dreams and nightmares, etc., but ultimately, to save himself from the ill fate. 'All this can be prevented if I get laid?' Dream's metaphorical head is spinning. 'Yes,' Destiny deadpans. 'Okay...' Death interrupts cautiously. 'Why am I here, though?' 'Because he needs to get laid regularly, and there is only one human who can handle this task. He must be made immortal for this reason.'
Dream feels like the Dream.exe file has been irrevocably damaged. 'I need to get laid regularly?' He repeats weakly. 'Brother, you know how important my function is. I have no time for-' 'This is exactly why you meet your doom in all the futures but one.' '…where I'm getting laid?' Destiny nods. Death beams. Dream pales to a previously unexisting shade of white. Without further ado, Destiny takes them all to the White Horse, buys some ale (his vacation mood starts to kick in - he expected more objections from Dream), and nods at one table. 'Robert Gadling. He is the chosen one.' 'Brother, you surely do not want me to lay with a mortal who has fleas and hasn't bathed for Delirium knows how long,' says terrified Dream. 'I surely do. Fleas are the least of your potential problems, little brother.' 'Alright.' Death says. 'Robert Gadling is immortal now. Can I go?' Destiny nods again. Death smiles and, before disappearing, loudly whispers to Dream to invite her to the wedding. Dream glances one last time at his brother and approaches Robert's table. If this is his destiny...and it's for the greater good of the universe and dreamers...Besides, this Robert Gadling is quite handsome - well, unwashed and smelly, but handsome still. Destiny is very pleased. Now, he only needs to sign up Desire for a few millennia of uncancellable therapy, and he can go drink his cocktails in a galaxy far, far away!
I love this, thank you so much for writing it all out. It really made me chuckle.
I'm absolutely obsessed with the idea of Destiny just getting really sick of the universe and all the bullshit that it contains. He's the equivalent of a harassed middle aged working parent attempting to keep everything under control and inevitably watching it all go to shit. He deserves such a good vacation, I hope there's a really good spa in the galaxy he's picked out.
Being the oldest sibling is hard, even when you come from a family of cosmic entities. And honestly? Destiny kind of likes the look of his new human brother-in-law. If this guy can keep Dream from going off the rails then that's wonderful, but the fact that he's cute? Also helps. Destiny may be blind but he is not immune to the Hobpropaganda. He's actually kind of not dreading the next family dinner? He can already see that it's going to run a whole lot smoother with Hob around the table.
But first: bottomless mimosas in a different star system. Bye, losers!
I love this
Keeping Them In Character...
It’s so interesting what you wrote about fixing Morpheus in the other post, @rriavian. I didn't want to take that one too off topic, hence I made a new one. I hope this is okay, because I love talking about these things, especially with other writers (everyone who reads this, writer or not, feel free to join in). I think I’ve said this somewhere else before (can’t remember where): If we keep him in character, there is no fixing him anyway.
But fanfic wouldn’t be fanfic without those attempts, and I totally get why. I want a different ending for him, too, alas, not in canon, even if that might sound contradictory. If they touched the ending in the show, I’d honestly be pissed off, but that’s my personal problem, and Neil can do with it whatever he wants—it’s his story. So I guess every fic that sees him alive at the end starts with the premise that we have to bend him into shape ever so slightly to make it possible. To me though, there’s a world of a difference between that and basically turning him into an OC with no resemblance to Morpheus bar name and looks (not saying that isn’t fair, it’s just not for me because if I wanted that, I’d write an OC, because that’s what he would be to me).
Morpheus is not weak. I even get why some people who mainly came to the Sandman via the show might be drawn into that direction initially, because we obviously see him very low at the beginning (I’m hesitant to say “at his lowest”). But after that, he pretty much stands in his power again (with ups and down obvs)—a power that burdens him for a multitude of reasons I don’t want to go into now, otherwise I’ll still sit here tomorrow. Wrote about it a million times though.
I think the fundamental misunderstanding is that anyone can fix him. So whoever we pair up with him can only walk with him, but he’ll need to take the steps himself, and more importantly: He would need a reason to want to do that. And yes, that’s exactly what my OC tells him at some point because she suffers, and she’s done with it despite understanding him on a deep level and accepting who and what he is—I think you're right when you say there’s a tendency in fandom to turn one half of the relationship into some kind of martyr and/or “void filler” to save someone. And the tricky thing about Morpheus is: He actually is looking for something to fill a void (which, to stress that again, doesn't mean he isn't powerful, so it's not to be mistaken for general weakness). And both in The Sandman and in real life, that never leads to anything good, but I can see why it's tempting to fall into that trap because his character lends itself particularly well to that type of trope (and I even play around with that in the first part of my fic, but it was also clear to me that it won't end there).
Now, this obviously isn’t real life, a story doesn’t necessarily have to lead to something good, but the most important question, to me, was always: What would make him take said steps himself, and above all: WANT to take them? Because truly, that’s where it all falls down in canon. And there is enough scope to explore that in quite a few different ways in my view.
For me, it was always clear that it can never be through wanting to change who or what he is on a fundamental level (that’s why I’m not into retired!Dream AUs, because they would fundamentally change who he is. Again, totally fine if people want to explore that, it's just not for me). I honestly believe he would bristle at that and recoil/retreat. Because it would just add to what is at the core of his very dilemma: If you want to change who and what he is, you basically admit you don’t truly understand him (not even those closest to him truly do), and that’s part of what breaks him (I say “part”, because there are more things in the mix than one can shake a stick at). And there is a clear difference between his being capable of change (we all know he is) and wanting to change him. They are not one and the same, but sometimes, fandom treats them as if they were.
Misunderstanding him, misinterpreting him is inherent to his being: He is Dream—forever out of reach, forever nebulous and unreal and weird and prone to be misunderstood/misinterpreted unless you stop trying and just trust the process/intuition--otherwise, it wouldn’t be (a) D/dream. It truly applies to all that he is. And you see what happens when he tries to rationalise things himself: Although he understands the boundaries between dreams and reality and keeps them in place, he is UNreality, and forever will be. And the way that gets ignored in fandom sometimes baffles me. Although it also doesn’t, because of course we’re human, and we want things to be real.
Back to those steps: I personally think he would never take them for himself because he doesn’t believe he has a story, and outright centring himself as the main character who is in charge of his own story is something he will always deny himself. But I think that’s also the way in? Because if he could perceive, at least initially, that he is part of someone else’s story and that they WANT him in that story (all that he is and isn’t, including all that is broken) with full acceptance but without complete self-denial. That they don’t try to change him, because they understand what the unreal is (and that requires a very particular type of person). That he would want to try because the love he has for them weighs heavier than how little he loves himself (was it you, @stellerssong who recently also wrote something along those lines, or am I making that up?). And that by doing that, he gradually learns to see himself through someone else's eyes. And once on that path, he would maybe, just maybe, start to understand that indeed he has a story of his own, and that he might be able if not to entirely rewrite, but at least to keep on writing it from this moment onward. Like everyone who believes (because believing something is possible means trusting in it despite it not being real, and trusting in the process rather than the result. He knows the power this wields over everyone but himself--not because it’s not true for him but because he won’t allow it. But maybe he could get himself to a stage where he allows it). That it's not about fixing anything really, but growing enough around what's broken and always will be, instead of trying to make it smaller or go away.
Yes, I do believe that might be possible, although there's much more to it than I've written here because it's incredibly complex, and it requires a lot of give and take, compromise and yes, pain along the way. And maybe it might not work at all (I never really 100% know where I end up when I write because my characters always, always make those decisions for me, and despite setting out with a plan, I almost never end up where I had initially intended to go. So if you asked me today, I couldn’t promise that I truly know where my current WiP is going and who will be where at its end, and it is very frustrating at times because I’m not always happy with what these guys are doing. At the moment, I'm truly not). But I believe he would at least try if someone who allowed for those dynamics were around. And that’s why I wrote an OC, because while I can see one or two canon characters that get fairly close to what I'd envision (and none of them are one half of the bigger ships), I ultimately couldn’t do it with them because there was something in their established dynamics that threw it off for me. Unless I would have pulled at least one of them (probably both) OOC to a degree that felt too much for me. But I'm always super interested in other people's process and line of thinking.
But yeah, that’s the precarious dance between trying to keep him in character while also working towards a different ending (that's obviously far less of a problem in one-shots). If that will ever work—who knows…
Alright, for those who want to hear more about this, I’m gonna explain what I had in mind while drawing this dreamling in the fishbowl AU :).
It’s 1989, the day Hob and Dream are supposed to meet each other. Dream doesn’t make it, so Hob returns home, shattered and drunken he passes out on a couch while thinking about his Stranger. Meanwhile, Dream is aware of the passage of time and grieves over not being able to meet Hob Gadling in the White Horse. He lies on the harsh cold glass of his cage and daydreams about freedom, Hob’s endless hope and will to live on, Hob’s warm smiles, and bemoans the unfortunate end of their last meeting. As Hob sleeps something is pulling him toward a familiar presence, curious and hopeful his sleeping mind follows the pull. Dream senses a sliver of brightness and specks of hope right behind the reach of his confined self. He turns his mind towards the bright light, gazes at a vibrant sunflower, and reaches for its warm embrace. As both Hob’s subconscious mind reaches for Dream and Dream unwittingly reaches for Hob, Hob is being pulled into the universe created by Dream’s self inside the confines of the cage. That’s how Hob finds himself kneeling in a glass sphere with his bewildered Stranger. Hob is delighted that he found his Stranger and horrified as he grasps the situation. They both seek forgiveness, Hob attempts to comfort Dream and tries to keep his rage on Dream’s behalf under control. Dream allows himself to be embraced and soothed by Hob but quickly regrets it as he knows that he can’t keep Hob beside him infinitely. He manages to muster the resolve to cut the connection between himself and Hob’s mind. He struggles through the words that are meant to send Hob back into his sleeping body, yet his voice breaks on Hob’s name as his grief and unwillingness to fall back into the cold loneliness seeps through. And the last thing he sees, before his world dims again, is Hob’s shocked face as he’s abruptly and forcibly torn from Dream… Hob wakes up with a start. Alone on a couch. Still trying to reach for his Stranger. It took long minutes to calm his racing heart and sort through his scattered thoughts and hazy memories. However, not long after, he sprang into motion, he had a rescue to plan after all.
Keep reading
This is so beautiful...
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Word Count: 2628 Excerpt:
What more does Hob want to hear? That sooner or later, intentionally or not, Dream crushes every good thing that comes his way? Or, to be precise, that he is "Self-destructive—" he says out loud. "—I presume that would be a fitting term for what I am."
Temple of Divine
No matter what i do i somehow always return to The Sandman for some reason.
Well, let's just share this endlessly :-).
Ferdinand Kingsley feat. American ads.
Hilarious
The first known Dreamling fic
Yesterday, I came across this Dreamling fic: All Hearts, Which I By Lacking.
Very special - it was written in 2003.
It's amazing how it foreshadows some of the common themes of the post-Netflix fics. Yet, it's also very different. Which makes sense because both Dream and Hob are different in the comics, so this is a good window into how people perceived them before the show. I will never be sure how I would see them because I only read the comics after the show :-(.
It's just that even though the fic is beautiful, the ending is very sad for me. F*ck, I am still sad today.
P.S. If anyone knows of an even earlier fic, feel free to share it.
I’ve seen five different authors take down, or prepare to take down, their posted works on Ao3 this week. At the same time, I’ve seen several people wishing there was more new content to read. I’ve also seen countless posts by authors begging for people to leave comments and kudos.
People tell me I am a big name fan in my chosen fandom. I don’t quite get that but for the purposes of this post, let’s roll with it. On my latest one shot, less than 18% of the people who read it bothered to hit the kudos button. Sure, okay, maybe that one sort of sucked. Let’s look at the one shot posted before that - less than 16% left kudos. Before that - 10%, and then 16%. I’m not even going to get into the comments. Let’s just say the numbers drop a lot. I’m just looking at one shots here so we don’t have to worry about multiple hits from multiple chapters, people reading previous chapters over, etc. And if I am a BNF, that means other people are getting significantly less kudos and comments.
Fandom is withering away because it feels like people don’t care about the works that are posted. Why should I go to the trouble of posting my stories if no one reads them, and of the people who do read them, less than a fifth like them? Even if you are not a huge fan of the story, if it kept your attention long enough for you to get to the bottom, go ahead and mash that kudos button. It’s a drop of encouragement in a big desert.
TL;DR: Passively devouring content is killing fandom.
Reblogging again
So much this
You know, kudos and comments are much beloved by all esp. yrs truly, but I have to say: I’ve been posting fic for 20 years, and I have never in my entire life had a story stay above a 1:9 kudos to hits ratio (or comments to hits, back when kudo wasn’t an option). Usually they don’t stay above 1:10, once they’ve been around for a few weeks.
I also have a working background in online marketing. In social media 1:10 is what you would call a solid engagement score, when people actually care about your product (as opposed to “liking” your Facebook page so they could join a contest or whatever). If BNFs are getting 1:5 - and I do sometimes see it - that is sky-high engagement. Take any celebrity; take Harry Styles, who has just under 30M followers and doesn’t tweet all that often. He regularly gets 3-400K likes, 1-200K retweets. I’ve seen him get up to just under 1M likes on a tweet. That’s a 1:30 engagement ratio, for Harry Styles, and though some of you guys enjoy my fics and have said so, I don’t think you have as lasting a relationship with my stories as Harry Styles’s fans do with him. XD;
Again, this is not to say we, as readers, should all go home and not bother to kudo or comment or engage with fic writers. That definitely is a recipe for discouraging what you want to see in future. But this is not the first post I’ve seen that suggests a 20% kudo ratio is the equivalent of yelling into the void, and I’m worried that we as writers are discouraging ourselves because our expectations are out of whack.
I think about this a lot, because it’s important to know what a realistic goal to expect from an audience is, even though I admit it definitely is kind of depressing when you look at the numbers. I was doing reading on what sort of money you can expect to make from a successful webcomic, and the general rule of thumb seems to be that if your merchandising is meshing well with your audience, about 1% will give you merch. I imagine ‘subscribe to patreon’ also falls in this general range.
Stuff that is ONLY available for dollars are obviously going to have a different way of measuring this, but when it comes to ‘If people can consume something without engaging back in any fashion (hitting a like button, buying something, leaving a comment)’ the vast majority will.
And as a creator that is frustrating but as a consumer it’s pretty easy to see how it happens. I have gotten steadily worse at even liking posts, much less leaving comments on ones I enjoy, since I started using tumblr. It’s very difficult to engage consistently. I always kudo on any fanfic I read and comment on the vast majority, but then again I don’t read a lot of fanfic, if you are someone who browses AO3 constantly/regularly for months or years, I could see how it’s easy to stop engaging. I don’t remember to like every YT video or tumblr fanart I see, much less comment on them.
When we are constantly consuming free content it’s hard to remember to engage with it or what that engagement means to the creators. And lol, honestly that sucks. Certainly as consumers we should be better about it. But also like, as a creator be kinder to yourself by setting a realistic bar of what you can achieve.
And IMO, if numbers matter to you (kudos, comments, etc) be honest about the fact that you CAN improve those things by marketing yourself better. The ‘I just produced my art and put it out there and got insanely popular because it was just so brilliant’ is less than a one a million chance. Lots of amazing content is overlooked every day because there is a lot of good content and a metric fuckton of mediocre to bad content. You can only SORT of judge the quality of your work based on the audience it generates, but if what you WANT is an audience there is way, way, WAY more you can be doing than simply producing whatever you immediately feel like. Marketing yourself is a skill and if you want the benefits of it you have to practice it.
I have a professional background in internet marketing as my day job and a moderate hobby business. My definition for “moderate” is “it pays for itself, keeps me in product, and occasionally buys groceries.” In the day job, which is for an extremely large global company, there are entire teams of people whose entire purpose of employment is to ensure a 3% conversion rate. That’s it. That is for a Fortune 100 company: the success metric is for 3% of all visitors to a marketing web site to click the “send me more info” link. My moderate business that pays for itself has a 0.94% conversion rate of views to orders. Less than 1%, and it’s still worth its time – and this is without me bothering to do any marketing beyond instagram and tumblr posts with new product. I know it feels like no one is paying attention to you and you’re wasting your time if you don’t get everyone clicking kudos or commenting but I promise, I PROMISE, you are doing fantastically, amazingly well with your 10% rate. You probably aren’t going to go viral AND THAT’S FINE. You’re only hurting yourself if you’re expecting a greater return – don’t call yourself a failure, because you’re NOT. You’re just looking at it the wrong way. I promise, you’re lovely just the way you are.
Reblogging this bc it is a take on fan engagement at AO3 that I haven’t seen before, and as a writer I find it helpful to have this reality check. Also I wonder which came first: the overall low engagement rates in internet commerce, or the freaking shit-ton of unwanted spam and advertising we’re constantly bombarded with?
I think as writers our assumption (my assumption anyway) is that the portion of hits that don’t convert to kudos equals the portion of readers who looked at your fic, didn’t like it, and never finished it. But it would seem that is an overly pessimistic assumption.
I should know this, because I ‘like’ very sparingly here and reblog only less sparingly, and yet I read and enjoy a lot of posts I don’t like or reblog.
#also something that is really obvious that none of this points out#(probably someone did somewhere in the notes but I do have a life)#your hit count will go up by virtue of PEOPLE REREADING YOUR FIC#a hit count disproportionate to kudos/comments#which are things that are only really done once #is INEVITABLE#and a GOOD thing #people rereading your fic is a good thing
I’m so glad @sniperct added those tags before I got to the bottom of the post because I was about to scream SO LOUDLY about people not realizing rereads are some of the reason why you have low engagement in other stats.
You can only hit the kudos button once. You could reread a fic a hundred times and the author would have absolutely no idea. I have fics that I can say I have read several dozen times. Easily. I’ve kudos’d them, and commented on some, but that’s it. These are fics I love so much I’ve downloaded them and would be devastated to lose them. Should I make it a point to tell the authors that? Yes. Am I still very bad at that? Yes.
Practical example!
Colour Forecasting - a fic @blueberrymffn and I have written posts weekly. We’re both productive and relatively popular authors in our fandom of choice. Out of curiosity, I track our stats for our weekly postings. We get an additional 2-7 kudos a week. That’s it. We get maybe 1 more bookmark. We do get between 400-600 hits. We can either get discouraged that we only got 5 kudos - or we can be psyched that we have 500ish people reading the fic like a periodical, eager for the next chapter!
Stats are always what you make them.
I’ve been tracking mine for almost 4 full years now, on a weekly basis, through 2-3 fandoms. There’s not really been a decline in overall engagement (and different fandoms have different levels and different types of engagement), as much as the following facts just… tend to be true.
Having a variety of fic lengths available for readers gets you more engagement
Posting relatively often (2-3 fics a month), gets you more engagement
Responding to comments gets you more engagement
Having more works in a given fandom gets you more engagement
Interacting in fandom spaces - Discord, Twitter, Tumblr, etc - gets you more engagement
Interacting with other creators gets you more engagement
Participating in fandom events gets you more engagement
Do you have to do all of these? No, of course not. But in tracking my stats and looking at trends, and watching them, and seeing how my fics and stats are reflected in them? They tend to be true, more often than not.
In my experience - unless you have a way to healthily engage with stats, it’s often better not to look at them, or to think too hard about them. Some of the joy can be sucked out of fanworks as a result.
Treat yourself kindly out there, loves.
Great discussion. If I average all my hits and kudos, 8.9% of people leave kudos, about which I often think that it's not great but not terrible... but it may actually be great. As to other people's fic, I always leave kudos when I like something, and sometimes a comment too, if I have something to say.
3K Commission Giveaway!
❄️ Draw or write something based on the image above (you can also redraw in your own style!) and post to tumblr- you can share a link to your story if you post it on AO3. Don’t forget to tag me so I see it!
❄️ There will be two winners (one art submission and one story submission) who will receive a free commission!
❄️Contest ends February 1st ! (Post by 11:59 on the 1st)
Reblogging the contest and my fic once again to give it a little boost.
You Drive Me Mad, Hob Gadling (7246 words) by Aetheltrythh Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Sandman (TV 2022), The Sandman (Comics) Rating: Mature Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Competence Kink, Dream's POV, Winter Hike, snowshoeing, Banter, Teasing, Fluff, Light Angst, No car sex - surprisingly, Marriage Proposal, Cuddling & Snuggling Summary: On their winter getaway, Dream and Hob have their transportation differences, starting with opinions on snowshoes, and continuing with cars. What could possibly go right? Little does Dream know that he can enjoy confined spaces of glass and steel, that he'll gain a new goth accessory, and that he's doomed by the narrative to be proposed to in the least spectacular way possible (sweet nonetheless).
Although Hob tries to keep his immortality a secret, which would be easier had he not led a social life, he always found a life without friends would not be worth living so whenever he studies for a new PhD he always has at least a few drinking buddies to hang out with.
He usually blends in well with humans in all eras, however, although most of them don’t mention it, his small circle of friends often find some peculiarities about him such as:
- his notes look as if they were written by a medieval monk. Once a sophomore asks if he uses a special calligraphy pen — Hob just shows him his sharpie that he got on discount from ASDA.
- he behaves like a benevolent uncle with everyone, including some of their professors, who are well into their eighties.
- the benevolent uncle behaviour also extends to people, who try to flirt with him. Once a tipsy girl tries to hit on him at the bar and he only pats her manicured hand and says, “Just pull yourself together child.”
(- the only exception is his boyfriend / sugar daddy, some goth twink, who turned up to one faculty function in a suit worth more than half the department’s salary and not only pranced around like he owned the place, but French kissed him in front of the dean and once Hob was too drunk to dance the skinny bastard lifted him and carried him out of the ballroom bridal style never to be seen again)
- cherishes his Honda Civic 2005 with an almost religious devotion, rather having it repaired for the 15th time than parting from it because ‘you wouldn’t just get rid of a faithful mount because it gets a bit old, would you?’
- speaks many languages but in some odd dialect?? (An exchange student from Paris once said his French is impeccable, but his vocabulary’s like reading a book from Rousseau)
- possibly has a tame raven
- has the patience of a saint with his dorm mates, except when they don’t keep things tidy because ‘I’ve had enough of fleas and cockroaches for a lifetime so you better clean that darn fridge or by God’s wounds I’ll throw it out of the window!’
- once they’re gathered at a friend’s house to watch rugby and his baby won’t stop crying Hob takes her in his arms and soothes her to sleep in five minutes. When they ask him when he learnt to do that he casts his eyes down and gets that odd look that makes him seem much older than thirty-two and says, ‘It’s not something one forgets how to do.’ and never talks about it again.
Brilliant.
Fic authors deserve more credit.
Story time: I started a book about 23 hours ago and just finished it. Also in that time I slept for 10 hours, spent time with family, was at work, etc. Anyway, I enjoyed the book (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda). But it felt like it flew by, so after I finished I looked up the word count because what are pages? Pages are meaningless. I only function in word counts anymore.
The estimate I found was 58,580. My immediate reaction was “oh, that’s why. That’s nothing!” But what a shitty response. Because no. That’s not nothing. That’s a whole. Damn. Book. An entire novel! And Fic authors regularly bust out 30k, 50k, 100k, 150k words. AND THEY DO IT FOR FREE. WHILE WORKING AND LIVING THEIR LIVES.
So anyway, thank your favorite fic author today because they deserve it. Because they’re amazing. They’re the MVPs.
Some rough word count equivalencies for you, via famous novels, just to give you an idea of what OP is saying:
30k fic = Animal Farm by George Orwell
50k fic = The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
75k fic = Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
100k fic = To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
150k fic = The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien
200k fic = Moby Dick by Herman Melville
250k fic = Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling
300k fic = A Feast for Crows by George RR Martin
350k fic = Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
400k fic = Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
I WROTE SOMETHING AS LONG AS MOBY DICK AND I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW
I can’t believe I’ve surpassed Animal Farm.
Holy shit.
This is awesome. With that said, huge appreciation also to fic writers who write shorter fics - 10k, 5k, 1k, 500 words. Because yeah, huge long fics get a lot of love, and a lot of labour goes into them, but the same is true for tiny fics as well. Not everyone is banging out huge great novels, but little ficlets are fantastic and still bring readers a ton of joy.
So if you’re feeling a bit downcast because you can’t write that 50 chapter epic or your latest WIP is “only” 2k and it still took you ages - that’s amazing. Seriously. Not everyone is naturally wordy or prolific. And you can say a ton with just a few hundred or thousand words.
Props to short fic creators - you guys are awesome.
The moment I realized that in the average year, I write and post enough fanfic to equal a novel that falls between To Kill A Mockingbird and The Two Towers was a HUGE moment for me. I’ve only posted one thing that passed thirty thousand words ever in my ~career~, but it all adds up.
You Drive Me Mad, Hob Gadling
7.2k words, Dreamling, Mature (but only slightly :P), Established relationship, Dream's POV, Competence kink, Banter, Teasing, Fluff, Winter hike, Snowshoeing, Light Angst, No car sex - surprisingly, Marriage proposal
My piece for @designtheendless' contest. It is the inevitable fic for that topic. Someone had to :-). You are welcome to the cheesy title too :D. Read it on AO3.
❄️ Draw or write something based on the image above (you can also redraw in your own style!) and post to tumblr- you can share a link to you
Summary:
On their winter getaway, Dream and Hob have their transportation differences, starting with opinions on snowshoes, and continuing with cars. What could possibly go right? Little does Dream know that he can enjoy confined spaces of glass and steel, that he'll gain a new goth accessory, and that he's doomed by the narrative to be proposed to in the least spectacular way possible (sweet nonetheless).
Excerpt:
"Hob. Stop the car. Please."
Hob shoots him a concerned look. "Right now?"
"At your earliest convenience."
"Okay, hold on a sec. I'll pull over as soon as I can. You can't get motion sickness, can you?"
"No. You need not worry."
Within a minute, Hob stops where the road is wide enough at what appears to be a lookout point. Maybe Dream will admire the scenery a bit later.
As he pulls the handbrake, Hob asks, "So what's going—"
Dream launches himself from his seat across the centre console (or maybe he moved through the Dreaming) and lands in Hob's lap, silencing him with a kiss. His lover tastes after tea and biscuits, soothingly familiar, and when he has to resurface for air, Dream purrs, "Nothing is going on. Only that you, Hob Gadling, are driving me mad."
Fumbling with the key behind Dream's back, Hob manages to turn off the engine. "You're a menace, dove. This the true reason you were avoiding cars? Mortally attracted to whoever's driving?"
"No."
Dream locks his lips against Hob's again, fingers going through his hair, and wriggles in his lap until he can feel Hob's growing interest and hear his heartbeat quickening.
"Whoa, if you keep this on, it might lead to some public indecency. Unless you get back in your seat and I'll just hide my head in between your pretty legs—" Dream just grinds against him with a wicked smile. "—Nnnghh—"
"That will not be necessary, lover. I am satisfied now—"
With one hand on his back and the other on Dream’s thigh, Hob rocks his hips upwards and groans, "Well that was fast."
"—that you will have to suffer for the rest of the way just as I do."
One thing I don't get but see a lot is the prospect of Dream apparently whining quite a lot but I myself have never seen this in the actual comics or the show. So where does it come from and do you think Dream is a whiner who whines about everything?
I think, just as the idea that he's a horrid person or just The Worst™ (both amongst his siblings or just as a character in general), or anything around that notion—it came from the simple fact that the story revolves around him and thus we see him the most out of anyone there; so we get to see a lot more sides of him that we never get to see or didn't see as much in others. Especially the unflattering sides.
Which is... Yeah of course the more you know about someone, the bigger the chances that you'd find unflattering sides of them. And yeah it's easy to focus on the bad rather than the good—maybe people are wired that way, and it takes some degree of willingness to understand and let go of preconceptions and maybe also some conscious effort in order to not strip it all out of context; and maybe people aren't quite willing to spare that for a character or someone they're not really interested to know.
I guess that's just what people do. I can't say I've never ever done that myself either, so I'm not judging, really. There's always something we're not as interested in investing ourselves in, and I think that's just natural. Whether or not we decide to try to understand is another matter.
As for the notion that Dream "whines a lot" specifically, I think people get that impression from the fact that we get to see his perception of the situation he's in, and we didn't get to see it as much in other characters. And he happens to find himself in trouble a lot, so... Of course he'd be... Well... Troubled. A lot, as well.
Though, frankly speaking, I think the majority of the time we see that he's feeling troubled was from his inner monologue in the comics? And we hardly ever saw him actually expressing that out loud?? The only one he ever confides to was Death (and there's a metaphor there)??
What did he do when others (except for Death) noticed that he's not okay and asked him about that?
What does it look like—from the outside—any other time he was troubled?
He said he was fine. He said he's NOT troubled—even when he was noticeably troubled and specifically asked to confide about his troubles. Or he said nothing despite it being clear that he was troubled. Or he refused to talk about it. OR he didn't even show any sign that he was troubled.
He never talks about his troubles except with Death.
Does that still count as whining? Or am I misremembering things here?
And about his inner monologues being all angsty and dramatic; is there anyone who NEVER do that in their own mind when they're in immense distress?? Do you people always complain Just The Right Amount with Just The Right Intensity even when you're being highly emotional?? Is there anyone who had NEVER EVER been highly emotional at all? Never been in such state of mind?? You guys NEVER been in immense distress ever?? NEVER experienced turmoil even in the comfort of their own mind?? You guys never been overdramatic even in your own mind??
What kind of brain do you guys have? Like, I really can't relate. Maybe I just have the fucked-up brain. Idk. I would REALLY love to have one that doesn't let you stress, angst, or despair for more than necessary and only give the ideal response to any distress or troubles—even internally, when no one else sees it.
I'm not even being sarcastic here, my brain IS officially fucked-up thanks to lifelong mental illnesses, so I really don't know if normal brain ARE supposed to be like that. And I guess a lot of people DO consider people like me to 'whine a lot' when it's really just the way my mind responds to distress—which, I also want it to NOT do that if I could help it. But alas, this is the brain that I have.
But anyways—
Bottom line is: I think we just get to see his response to distress more than we see other character's response to distress—and especially in the comics: we see his internal response to distress more than we see how it looked like from the outside so maybe that lead people to mix it up and get the impression that he's whining when he's mostly being dramatic in his own mind and he actually never talks about any of his troubles except with Death (which, again, huge metaphor there)
Just my speculation though, as I don't see him as whiny in the first place—if anything, not showing vulnerability is one of his undoing—so that's just the possible source of that notion that I could think of. People who think that he 'whines a lot' might have different reasons to think so—and I'm not interested in arguing about that or changing their minds. That is one of the things I'm not willing to invest myself in.
Man, I’m so glad that this topic has been brought up because it is a huge bugbear of mine.
I’ve tried to get to the bottom of why people see him like this so many times, and it still flummoxes me.
My theories are:
1. Many see him as weak due to the series (we see him at his lowest, Tom’s eyes are permanently wet and he looks like he’s about to cry any moment etc).
But even that doesn’t seem enough, at least for me, to justify that he’s “whining a lot”. In fact, he’s still remarkably outwardly stoic, and it’s so… obvious he’s pushing it all down instead of talking about it (perhaps two exceptions when he talks to Death and the Corinthian, but I still wouldn’t call that whining?).
2. What you wrote about mainly getting his POV in the comics.
Yes, we’re sort of following him around, we get a bit more insight into his thought process than those around him. But “whining”? You already did all the work to bring in some panels, so I won’t repeat that, but again:
He is suppressing everything to a fault. He is the poster child for “showing vulnerability is a weakness” (when it can be strength). He never talks about stuff. He doesn’t want to bother anyone with his feelings. If anything, it would have been good for him to whine more. Btw, that was always one of the reasons why I empathised with him so strongly—because that was me, for a very long time. Here was someone who always tried to solve every problem himself, never asked for help, never wanted to get on anyone’s nerves or be a burden, and I felt that so hard. And I guess over the years, it’s also become one of the main takeaways for me (and that’s why storytelling is so powerful): We can’t exist like that. We are not meant to live like that. Asking for help is good. Community is strength. Relationships are paramount (it doesn’t matter what kind because different people need different things. But no one is meant to be alone. And we remain alone, even in relationships, if we don’t trust and allow ourselves to be vulnerable).
3. Tumblr blorbofication
I honestly think this plays a big part in it. Many characters of The Sandman (not just the two dudes in the ship) have been bent (haha!) beyond recognition over the past year. They have nothing in common anymore with either the comics or the series. They have become objects of projection, and it’s self-perpetuating. And for Morpheus in particular, I think it’s the dynamic of the ship? Because most (of course not all) takes I see make him the… dare I say feminised half of the “relationship”. That goes for looks in fanart (Hob is almost always masc to the 100th degree, Dream is very, very often… not, to the degree that he often looks really feminine. Let’s leave it at that), behaviour in fanfic and even sexual dynamics in the latter. The amount of fanfics of the ship I’ve seen where Dream is a whiny little prick, or at least extremely submissive, but not in a strong way, is honestly fascinating. And it’s not that I don’t think people shouldn’t do whatever they like in fanart, but I do think a year of that has led to a version of Dream that is perceived as weak. And we could start a whole discussion now why there is even a link between that weakness and his very apparent feminisation, but that’d lead too far here.
And as someone who loves this story so much, I admit it is quite hard for me to see someone who is not whiny at all getting portrayed as such. Dream is powerful. He is not weak. He is a force to be reckoned with. He is strong in so many ways, but his fatal flaw is that he can’t open up and trust.
To be known is to be real, but that is unfortunately not part of his nature, and sadly he conceptually can’t be any other way 🥺
credit to alterdiego7
Incredibly cute