Having read the whole Sandman library and the Death books, The Dream Hunters, etc, I just suddenly came up with a little thought.

Seeing as the Sandman's appearance seem to be dependant on who's watching him, I came to wonder what is his real appearance? Is the tall and pale gentleman we see in the comic books his own self, or is it just a projection through the author/artist/ourselves?

The foxes see a dark fox, the cats see a dark cat. In The Doll's House, we see a dark-skinned Sandman, yet it's the same Dream of the Endless.

Is Dream in fact a completely abstract idea, as is mentioned in The Wake ("How can you kill the personification of an action?") or is it a physical being which is incarnated Dream's function?

I'm thinking that what each and everyone of us are seeing is in fact an illusion, there is no Sandman but within ourselves. However, our own comprehension of this idea changed as the "Morpheus-point of view" was replaced by the "Daniel-point of view".

Tell me what you think

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Talentless and pointless

Something to clog up the idea - the Endless do not automatically change to suit the viewer. In the Sandman special, Orpheus saw a Death which was not the one he expected/was used to. What can we derive from this? That they have preferred forms perhaps, despite being shapeshifters?

They're hyperevolved Durlans from the future!

See you, space cowboy.

~~~~~~~~~

Those who are different must stand united!

"Shared pain is lessened, shared joy is increased, and thus do we refute entropy."-- Spider Robinson
http://lon.blogspot.com -- Its a slightly less eloquent me.

I remember discussing the appearance of the Endless not that long ago on another thread here.

Basically, it seems like Dream and Delerium have the most changable appearance, (which kind of makes sense if you think about it), desire changes somewhat, but not as much, while Death, Destiny, and Despair always appear to stay the same. Destruction we don't see that much, but the only thing that seems to change with him is his clothes.

So in short, it seems like it's up to nature of each individual Endless as to how they appear and how much they change. Some are always the same, some change quite a bit, and some are in between.

One last things to say about Dream's preferred appearance; it seems to me that since it's the form he has throughout most of the series, especially when he's in the Dreaming with only the other creatures of the Dreaming to see him, that the tall, pale young man in black is Dream's preferred state.

~
James

Larger than life is the perfect size

Consider the following:
We see Dream interact with animals. The other Endless we do not (that I recall offhand). We cannot know how the death of birds looks unless we are shown.

Hmm I remember that Death mentioned she prefered to look her 'own favored way' so it seems that most of the Endless, or maybe all of them, have the ability to change their appearance, but why is it so that Dream appears different to some people and stay in his 'favored' self at other times?

Is it maybe because the Dreaming is such a dynamic place? Because he looks the same when he's out in the real world, doesn't he?

He might just try to appeal to the dreaming creatures by giving them an appearance they would expect. A cat feels probably much closer to a fellow cat, even though it's dark and mysterious, and the Queen in the Doll's House probably expected a dark skinned person, Kai'Ckul, as she hadn't seen any light skinned people.

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Talentless and pointless

I think that Delirium changes as much as she does because she is the personification of insanity-in essence, instability. The mental instability of crazy people is visualized and personified by her own visual instability. We never know what she's going to look like. (and it drives me freaking nuts sometimes.) She's unpredictable, because that is the nature af insanity: it can't be predicted or really understood unless one walks that road him/herself.

As for Dream, he is the only one of the Endless whose job requires him to interact with live mortals on a day to day basis. If he were to appear to a human as a talking cat, the human would probably freak out and not deal with him. Plus, it's something to do with the nature of dreams that they can only be really understood by those that experience them directly. And all dreams make perfect sense at the time we are dreaming them. Thus, in order for Dream to make perfect sense whenever we experience him, and for us to understand him, he has to take on some form that we can easily relate to, and communicate with.

There are also certain things about him that must remain constant because of this same nature, such as his being male, fairly tall, and stuck to his damn rules. Somehow, when humans personify dreams, the Sandman,for themselves, they imagine someone male, who is very conscientious about his work. It is also difficult for us, probably due to the prejudices we are exposed to from early life, to imagine someone with that much power who is shorter than we are. So anyone who meets Dream sees him as being a fairly tall male. INCLUDING cats, as we saw in Dream Country, except that cats are somewhat more credulous, and are capable of seeing someone supernaturally large.

And just how much does Delerium change? Barely at all I say, if you don't count hair

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Originally posted by GMZoe:
And just how much does Delerium change? Barely at all I say, if you don't count hair

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No, you're right about that. What's most dynamic and ever-changing about Delirium is her speech and her total lack of logic and sense.

And I think you're right too, phool2056. Dream is very much dependant to interact with people, but so is Death. While Dream might see each and everyone of us every night, she meets up with people twice in our lives (well, once really, because we're dead the second time; so once in our lives and once in our after-lives, spare a handfull of special people).



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Talentless and pointless

Also, consider that Dream lives in, arguably, the most rigidly mutable realm of the Endless. By that I mean that, yes, Dream takes an almost infinite variety of forms, but those forms are limited by and, in a sense, dictated by, the dreamers. (When Dream visits Hob at the height of his power, it's with a bottle of wine he had to snatch from someone's dream)

The Realms of Desire and Despair are not a reflection of the mortals viewing them, at least from what we've seen.

Destruction doesn't have a realm.

Death's realm is unknown and secret. Her apartment's a mess, though.

Delerium's realm is constantly shifting and crazy, but clearly not under what we'd call conscious control.

Destiny's realm doesn't change.

Dream's is the one that changes to suit the needs and wants of the mortals, and Dream is the Endless most bound to the Rules, whatever those are. I think it's less that he chooses to alter his appearance when meeting people and more that he ought to, and so he does, almost without a thought.

And the Dreaming has proven to be able to change as much as its Lord.

In Dream of a thousand cats, the Raven had no skin nor flesh over its (his? Ravens tend to be male) head. Just what a cat would do to a bird.

The entrance to the Castle has appeared under several portraits, including a train station in The Kindly Ones. This last change had no reason to be, since there were only dreams when Dream arrived. It is part of the intrinsic nature of the Realm, regardless of its visitors.

@)--,--'--,---



The World is wide, but people can be close

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Originally posted by Dweller in Darkness:
Dream's is the one that changes to suit the needs and wants of the mortals, and Dream is the Endless most bound to the Rules, whatever those are. I think it's less that he chooses to alter his appearance when meeting people and more that he ought to, and so he does, almost without a thought.

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Well I do think he chooses it, maybe as a form of self-protection? Being what others expect him to be prevents him from shoing himself as he really is.
Death shows up at the family meeting just the way she is, but Destiny makes her get changed. But Dream, he just appears as he's expected to.

I tend to think Dream likes to look like he does in Season of Mysts, when he's thinking about the key issue, all alone and troubled in his private rooms, and he's wearing just black jeans and black t-shirt, barefoot. No cloak, no fancy clothes, hair just like it goes.

I'm thinking, the way Death operates, she doesn't need to change her appearance. I mean, she's talking to people who have just died. They're about to go see things a hell of a lot weirder than some girl in black, or else they're going to be reincarnated and forget all about their encounter. Whereas Dream, partly from the reasons I outlined previously (well scroll up and read it if you don't remember! I don't remember either!), and partly, I htink now, out of his catlike good manners, has to be able to relate to whoever is looking at him. I also think that the door guardians and the way they change is awesome.

Also, as for the places chabnging, it is stated NUMEROUS times that the siblings' respective realms are just extensions of themselves. When Death's realm changes in The Song of Orpheus to be more mentally manageable to Orpheus, Death's costume changes too. When Destruction abandons his duties, his realm ceases to exist for any practical purpose. And when Dream gets kidnapped, the Dreaming gets all screwed up, the castle goes away, etc.

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Originally posted by clover:
Well I do think he chooses it, maybe as a form of self-protection? Being what others expect him to be prevents him from shoing himself as he really is.
Death shows up at the family meeting just the way she is, but Destiny makes her get changed. But Dream, he just appears as he's expected to.

I tend to think Dream likes to look like he does in Season of Mysts, when he's thinking about the key issue, all alone and troubled in his private rooms, and he's wearing just black jeans and black t-shirt, barefoot. No cloak, no fancy clothes, hair just like it goes.

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I think his disguises and various appearances are a form of protection as they are social conventions. Appearing as cats to cats, as an African deity to his African girlfriend and so forth. Those trappings form a barrier. Is that sort of what you mean.

Yeah, good thought. Part of his whole deal is that he doesn't really let anyone get too close. As Matthew says, "He wasn't too good at close...unless you're talking astronomical distances-y'know, the sun is close to alpha centauri..." And maybe he does have one way that he's supposed to look, but to keep himself from being vulnerable, he shows everyone a facade-which would give further meaning to the facade story in "Dream Country," which always seemed sort of random and extraneous to the rest of the story to me.

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Originally posted by GMZoe:
And just how much does Delerium change? Barely at all I say, if you don't count hair

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she does tend to turn into fish.
and butterflies

~ The Somnambulist of the Polar Bear Cartel ~
______________________________
I wish *I* was Spiderman

hrm. I just don't remember those scenes (but then I haven't read Sandman since it came out). I certainly remember those things around her, but not her herself changing

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Originally posted by clover:
I tend to think Dream likes to look like he does in Season of Mysts, when he's thinking about the key issue, all alone and troubled in his private rooms, and he's wearing just black jeans and black t-shirt, barefoot. No cloak, no fancy clothes, hair just like it goes.

http://www.schotch.net/LesChats/rainbow2.gif

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Also the garb he chose when he escaped from the initial capture, and he had to clothe himself.. The casual, rather modern clothes. Strange that it's what he's most comfortable in, rather than something more..traditional, or harking back to an earlier age, for all that's said about him being resistant to change?

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Apocalypses are always just around the corner. Words mean whatever you want them to mean.
-Signal to Noise, Neil Gaiman

Being traditionalist is an odd thing. While Dream may be very resistant to changes of his personality, he CANNOT be resistant to changes of his appearance or world, because that is dependent on the dreamers. therefore, his clothing would not matter too much to him, as long as it was black and depressing, because that is the aspect of his clothing defined by his personality.

And I honestly believe the Sandman is a very vain man, he likes to be fashionable and trendy and look good. So, he's the type of person that, while having his own style, is "a dedicated follower of fashion".

Sir cloverheart of Mischief