One Perfect Moment - The Oneiromancer issues a punishment...

[icon_uk]

From Neil Gaiman's Sandman series comes a unique form of punishment that only the Lord Of Stories could envisage

(Warning, below the cut lies commentary on a plot that involved rape. I don't go into graphic detail or anything, but better to warn those that it might be a trigger for)



During the course of the Sandman run, we saw a number of unique punishments that Morpheus inflicts on those he thinks have earned them.

The basis of this story is that Richard Madoc, an aspiring young British writer has, through dubious and frankly unpleasant means, come into possession of Calliope, Muse of Epic Poetry. I mean that literally, He bought her off another author who had gone through the complex process of capturing her decades ago.

Madoc is, not to put too fine a point on it, a vile, smug little shit, with no redeeming features to speak of. He has used her, abused her, raped her and basically demeaned her in every way possible (so trust me, this is the sort of punishment that is entirely deserved). Her being his captive means her powers inspire him to write magnificent books, which have achieved critical acclaim and financial reward and are optioned for big budget art house movies, so he just gets smugger and smugger.

Finally Calliope calls on the Witches Three/Triple Goddess/Kindly Ones for help, but they can do nothing, since the original captor followed all the rules precisely. She can only be freed if her current owner willingly releases her himself, and he sees no interest in doing so since thanks to her life is good.

Since her own pantheon can't help, she asks the Kindly Ones to alert an old lover to her plight. It's a last ditch, genuinely desperate, effort since she and her lover parted on poor terms and he is not known for his sense of nostalgia or compassion. The lover of course is Morpheus.

However, unbeknownst to Calliope, recent experiences have changed Morpheus view on being held in captivity and he decides to assist her, in his own unique way. When Madoc dreams, he finds he has a visitor in his dream, who politely requests that he release Calliope.



Madoc wakes, shakes off his odd dream and heads out to get a paper.





Eventually, realising that this will drive him insane, he releases Calliope in the hope that it will stop the never ending flood of ideas. ... It does, but only because Calliope, taking pity on her captor, asks Morpheus to release him. He does, but he isn't quite finished with Madoc yet. Calliope may be forgiving, Morpheus is not.... When Felix asks the now silent Madoc what had been happening to him, Madoc replies that he has no idea.... in fact, he has no ideas at all anymore

(Personally, I love that Gaiman was able to throw out enough story ideas to keep a team of writers salivating for months, but purely as a throwaway.)

Comments

[blackruzsa]

A blu blu blu
How did you know? I was rereading my Sandman all night. Seriously, this was one of Morpheus' milder punishments, and more justified than his past track record. Poetic justice, really, for the man who wanted ideas and was willing to hurt another to get them.

[icon_uk]

Feel free to post some of his others. I can think of one memorable one from early in the series but don't have the issues to hand.

[blackruzsa]

It's difficult to scan, especially when you don't wanna ruin the spines );

I guess I gotta go looking :P

[md84]

While Madoc did earn his punishment, this is also a sign that Morpheus is still pretty ruthless, which is actually treated as a character flaw. By all accounts, Morpheus was planning to leave Madoc an empty shell of a man for the rest of his life -- a terrible if well deserved fate.

The end of the series shows the end of Madoc's punishment -- he is able to come up with a story idea that no one else in the world has. The tone of the story treats this absolution as a good thing.

[icon_uk]

I'd forgotten that Daniel released Maoc from his aboslute writers block. I'm not sure I'd count it as absolution, so much as the end of his sentence (A phrase which I'm sure I could have worked cleverly into a literary pun if my brain were working properly yet)

[md84]

He knew his punishment was over when he came up with a sentence that he somehow knew for certain that no one else had ever composed. The end of his sentence was literally a sentence.

[bliumchik]

Which I always like to link to the end of the Invisibles, which basically does the same thing to its entire fictional universe.

[shadowpsykie]

I read this story as part of the collection That included the Dreaming Cats, William Shakespeare, and Element Woman for a graphic novel class. And i loved IT!

Before that I saw his Doctor Whore episode and then because of that started reading American Gods. Then recently I started reading his Sandman Series from issue 1 on my kindle.

I have to say.... I love him. He is a true artist, a poet, in an almost metaphysical sense. Far more down to earth than Morrison, and truely one of us. I really do just love all his characters. I feel like he would be st home amongst s tribe of elders around a camp fire exchanging stories.

Plus he&s a total geek! And really great to his fans! http://io9.com/5913628/neil-gaiman-writes-a-poem-for-a-fans-tattoo check this out

[hw221]

"Before that I saw his Doctor Whore episode"
I'm sorry, and I know what you mean, but that typo is absolutely *hilarious*.

[shadowpsykie]

... Damn kindle....


damn... i can't edit it..... ugh... guys... you know that's not what i meant! :(

[icon_uk]

Suuuuuuuure you didn't! Says something interesting about the predictive text on your Kindle!

[shadowpsykie]

.... Yeah well... You say a word a couple of times and it just keeps on using it even if you don't want to...

[bliumchik]

Next on HBO... she won't charge for the stitches, but she will for the handjob!

[bruinsfan]

I was thinking "Oh no! Don't tell me shadowpsykie is one of those #NotMyDoctor folks!"

[shadowpsykie]

oh not at all She is TOTALLY my doctor! all my Doctor's are my doctor

[okkult3000]

My therapist tells me I have a Doctor/Whore complex.

[icon_uk]

I used Death's talk with Urania Blackwell, the Element Woman, in one of the earlier "One Perfect Moment" weeks! :)

[captainbellman]

Although you will note that nobody's perfect. The plot structure and character types of the first few stories of "Sandman" are very much copied from Alan Moore's "Swamp Thing" in the same way that the first few "Harry Potter" books were transparently ripped off from Jill Murphy's "Worst Witch", Eva Ibbotson's...well...too many books to list, and many others. Even the word "Muggle" was ripped off from Roald Dahl's "The Twits".

Thing is, "Sandman" did eventually come into its' own, and rather beautifully, but one can't help seeing how Gsiman has trodden in Moore's footsteps, however admirably, over his career, to the point that he is taking advantage of the goodwill that he has with DC (that Moore certainly does not have) in order to make what is essentially "Before Sandman", in case DC decided to do it without him.

Even "The Doctor's Wife" had a sneaky little reference to "Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?" - the dying character saying 'Hello, Hello Doctor', rather than 'Hello, Superman. Hello...'

[captainbellman]

DISCLAIMER: I have no especial hatred of J.K. Rowling or Gaiman. I just think it should be more universally acknowledged that both of them - though her especially - had to climb on some shoulders to get where they are today. Stealing and reinventing another person's work is an essential part of the creative process; but Rowling did not do it well, or did not learn to, until her fourth book, and it shows.

[icon_uk]

I'm not even sop sure it's much of a direct rip off of Murphy, since the boarding school soap opera has been a childrens staple in the UK for over a century and a half, from Tom Brown's Schooldays in the mid 19th century, to the Jennings series in the 1950's the Enid Blyton's Chalet School (et al) for what felt like eternity.

Gaiman and Moore's DC careers I'd say are perhaps more "typical" than referential. It's fairly common for an unknown quantity to be given an obscure character that they can have more free rein with than giving them a major property. Moore and Swamp Thing, Morrison and Doom Patrol/Animal Man, Gaiman and Black Orchid. The fact that three of the four were quirky to begin with and the fourth (Animal Man) was basically a tabula rasa, helped them showcase their styles.

The "Hello Doctor, hello" I sort of agree with, though perhaps less than I might. The Superman one was Bizarro who really WAS saying goodbye the only way he could, whereas in the Doctor Who story the character meant it quite specifically.

[mrosa]

(Personally, I love that Gaiman was able to throw out enough story ideas to keep a team of writers salivating for months, but purely as a throwaway.)

I don't know, I find many of them ridiculous, and I think it's very easy to drop strangely-sounding ideas willy-nilly; the real challenge is to develop them into something well-written, the execution of them.

[ensiform]

True; the best stories aren't typically based on bizarre or original ideas but take very old and simple ideas and flesh them out so they touch a universal chord (Hamlet is just about an uncertain, hot-blooded prince avenging his father; Romeo and Juliet about two lovers who are kept apart from their families).

[korvar]

Which may even be the point - Richard Madoc is imprisoning and abusing Calliope on the grounds he needs ideas, when ideas aren't even the most important thing about stories...

[grazzt]

Fun fact: apparently a lot of fans took up Gaiman's idea about the sestina (last page, third panel) and tried to actually construct one along the same lines as Madoc's. This got to the point that Gaiman made a comment that he wished he'd suggested an easier form of poetry to write.