#lil endless

[thenightling]

The Return of The Little Endless

Twenty-three-years-ago, Jill Thompson wrote and illustrated the only children's books tie-ins for Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. Jill Thompson is the author of the Scary Godmother children's books. She is the sometimes illustrator for Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. She is also the author of the only Sandman Manga, Death: At Death's Door.

All though The Sandman, itself, is NOT intended for children, Jill Thompson attempted the first and only children's books using the characters. Inspired by Abel's storytelling in issue 40 of The Sandman, "A Parliament of rooks," Jill Thompson took the concept of The "Little Endless" and made story books out of them. For those new to The Sandman: The Endless are seven God-like entities who are the living embodiment of certain concepts. Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium.

The first of these children's books was The Little Endless. This dealt with Barnabas the dog, having misplaced Delirium. He goes on a quest to find her and on his way he meets up with each of her siblings, who in turn each give him a charm from his bracelet. The charms are the sigils for each Endless, but Dream's is a star instead of his helm. All the while, Barnabas thinks something is chasing behind him. Finally he confronts what is chasing him (his own tail) and he gets very dizzy chasing it. That's when he finds Delirium. The second book was The Little Endless: Delirium's Party. In this story Delirium tries to cheer up Despair by throwing a party for her. Each Endless tries to give her a gift but her reaction is always just "..." Finally when all the other Endless are disappointed and crying because they couldn't make Despair happy, this is what makes her happy. A reminder, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman is NOT for children but The Little Endless storybooks are child-friendly.

Amazon has The Little Endless Storybook set reprint available for pre-order right now for June 4th, 2024. The price is $35.99 and the listing on Amazon claims the books are paperback while another site says they are hardcover. Based on the price I think they must be hardcover. That is a bit steep for two paperback books. When these were first published in 2000 they were available in paperback and then hardcover.

[kitsunesongs]

Sandman deaging fic idea:

Dream is a bit stronger when Roderick Burgess summons him. Not strong enough to break the circle, or flee, but strong enough to fight more, struggle longer.

If it had been anything else, he would have escaped. But Desire had meddled.

So instead, Dream is forced down and into a form that is alien to him, bound into a body that cannot hold all of him - and in self defence, he regresses to a state where it would hold all of him. A state from when things were still new and unformed, and there wasn't much dreaming going on. Where Dream himself was the youngest Endless sibling, as all the others hadn't come into existence yet. Where he had eyes that showed parts of his mother, stars moving in darkness, where he was small and fragile and talked through his mind rather then with his voice. Alien and ethereal and small and fragile and confused, bound away from the collective subconscious of hundreds of billions of galaxies, in a form with smooth round cheeks and hair that whisper around like he was underwater.

The form of a child.

And when the Corinthian comes to investigate, and sneaks in to spy on his lord and King bound and helpless, this is the form that he sees.

[thenightling]

Are Abel and Death pretty much best friends by now?

Ha!  Good question.  We never see Death actually come for Abel except during Abel’s own chibi-fied retelling of the original Cain and Abel tale. I think that’s part of why he always recovers, because she doesn’t come for him anymore.