That is an excellent thought - Delight's becoming Delerium as a change in a point of view. I'll toast to that one! Cheers!

A further thought. The idea crops up in a conversation between Death and Dream that, as much as they epitomise one thing in their duties, they also define another. Death defines life; Desire defines hate; Despair defines hope; Destruction defines creation; and Dream (Death teased) defines reality. The only really negative side-definition there is hate for Desire; but Desire isn't exactly kind-hearted to begin with. Delight, on the other hand, would have defined her opposite - sorrow. So perhaps, if she changed as a point of view, it was so that she no longer degined something negative - instead, she took the sorrow upon herself, and went mad to become Delirium, which defines sanity.

It could work. Or, alternatively, it could be Monday and I could be procrastinating. Or both.

quote:

Death defines life; Desire defines hate; Despair defines hope; Destruction defines creation; and Dream (Death teased) defines reality. The only really negative side-definition there is hate for Desire; but Desire isn't exactly kind-hearted to begin with. Delight, on the other hand, would have defined her opposite - sorrow. So perhaps, if she changed as a point of view, it was so that she no longer degined something negative - instead, she took the sorrow upon herself, and went mad to become Delirium, which defines sanity.

This is similar in a way to what niko said earlier, about despair's opposite being delight and thus causing delight to have to change. I prefer this though i think (sorry niko!) becuase i don't think that the endless would be created in such a way that one would have to change because it was an opposite of another. does that make sense? either they would be two distinct endless that would co-exist, or only one would have existed in the first place.
I really like the point of view idea as well. the new dream shows some differences to the old one that are stated in the wake, so it would make sense that delerium would be different to delight, although the contrast is very strong.

something that is puzzling me now tho; why didn't a new destruction arise when the old one left? i know it explains this somewhere but i am at work and without my collection :-(

quote:

Originally posted by fionchadd:
something that is puzzling me now tho; why didn't a new destruction arise when the old one left? i know it explains this somewhere but i am at work and without my collection :-(

It's because Destruction didn't die - he just walked away from his duties. His point of view is still existant; and wbecause he could potentially go back at any moment and resume his role, another one can't arise. In fact, the reason he chose to walk away rather than die was so that a new Destruction wouldn't be forced into a role that he himself dislikes - instead, it just works on its own.

ahah, thanks

but that raises the question that if the things that the endless personify can exist without them, why did the endless arise in the first place?

I think that in a sense destruction goes on with Destruction the Endless, even though Destruction isn't personally supervising his domain in the way that the other Endless are.

As to fionchadd's question as to why the Endless exist in the first place, I can't say other than "that's the way the universe works". Clearly they weren't created by human (or other sentient) imagination, as they existed before sentient life.

As I understand it, Destiny has been around since the beginning of the universe. Death appeared with the first mortal entitity (although if you argue that the Endless aren't strictly speaking, immortal, this should have been a millisecond or so after Destiny). The others came along after the first sentient life-forms were capable of appreciating their aspects.

That said, I've only read as far as A Game of You, and the rest of my knowledge comes from second-hand sources, so if there's anything here that contradicts stuff in the later books, I will stand corrected.

But the Endless are immortal. The new Dream is a new character, but is *also* the old Dream. He says in The Wake that he's been alive since nearly the beginning of the universe. He's just a different aspect of the concept of dream, and I suspect this means Daniel is the kind, gentle side of dreams whereas Morpheus was the harsh, unforgiving side.

Anyway, as for Delirium, I always thought she stopped being Delight when humanity (or all lifeforms) lost some kind of innocence. Maybe delirium is just another aspect of delight, and at some point this became apparent and Delight was forced to change.

About the rest of the Endless changing, most of them have. In Dream's story in Endless Nights, which is set billions of years in the past, we see a fairly cheerful Dream who is very friendly towards Desire, and a brooding, morose Death. So Dream and Death both changed, Delight changed, Despair died and presumably the new one was different in some way, and Destruction changed enough to want to abandon his realm. Only Destiny and Desire seem to have stayed the same.

It's strange but you can see the similarities between Dream's life and God's life.

Jesus - Presumably God's son is more forgiving, sincere, etc (similar to Daniel). Jesus is killed through his father's designs.

I could explain further but it's too early on a weekend for me.

quote:

Originally posted by Black Wings:
But the Endless are immortal. The new Dream is a new character, but is *also* the old Dream. He says in The Wake that he's been alive since nearly the beginning of the universe. He's just a different aspect of the concept of dream, and I suspect this means Daniel is the kind, gentle side of dreams whereas Morpheus was the harsh, unforgiving side.

Thanks! Like I said, I'm only half way through at the moment, so it's little things like that I'm likely to miss.

Heh, I missed tons of little things, big things too, when I first read it. I've just reread it and with the help of The Sandman Companion, I understand it all a lot better.

Yeah, I've found that dipping into the relavant sections of The Sandman Companion is a good way to get a more in-depth understanding of the stories. The list of cultural references in the Sandman annotations also makes fascinating reading.

ok then, a new question for the group:

seeing as my take on delirium's and destruction's stories in endless nights (that these were to do with her transformation) has been comprehensivley disproved, what do people think they are about? Someone earlier said that delirium's story was about a girl deep inside her realm, but i think it is more personal than that. Also, in detruction's story he is looking after del becuase she hasn't been well, so something must have happened to her directly. your thoughts?

I think the fact of Dream's death finally hit her a few years later and messed her up completely. Or something messed her up anyway, I don't know what else it might be. But I think it is that she goes really deep into her realm, and because her state of mind is so unbalanced and even crazier than usual, no sane person could enter to rescue her and keep their sanity, which is why Dream, Matthew and Barnabus get a bunch of crazies together and send them in. Once they get her back, they somehow get in touch with Destruction (or he gets in touch with them) and he agrees to look after her for a while, while still travelling the world.

That's my theory anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by fionchadd:
ok then, a new question for the group:

seeing as my take on delirium's and destruction's stories in endless nights (that these were to do with her transformation) has been comprehensivley disproved, what do people think they are about? Someone earlier said that delirium's story was about a girl deep inside her realm, but i think it is more personal than that. Also, in detruction's story he is looking after del becuase she hasn't been well, so something must have happened to her directly. your thoughts?

I think Del has a tendency to become personally involved. The rape victim girl was so deep in her realm that Del became trapped too, going into the girl's mind as the girl went into hers. Perhaps, as was suggested, she was missing Dream and feeling more vulnerable because of it - or maybe something else upset her. Who knows? After all, Del is flighty.

As for the other story, isn't she changing from Delight to Delirium then, and Destruction is comforting her?

that was what i thought originally. however, at the beginning, neil says that although the stories can be read in any order, destruction's story follows deliriums, so if the first isn't about her change then i can't see that the second is either

It's too modern to be about her change. She was Delirium and not Delight in the Orpheus story set about three thousand years ago.

?

I think I'm confusing my Del stories. Are we talking about Endless Nights, or the fragment where she's reminiscing in Brief Lives?

Endless Nights I think.

yep, endless nights

Ahhh. Right. The 'Del & Destruction' comfort moment I meant was the one in Brief Lives; I'd forgotten she appears in his Endless Nights story.