The Dreaming #11 - "Understanding"

[laughing_tree]

Literally any other IP, one can abstractly achieve levels of really high quality comickery without necessarily having to sweat blood over every detail. But The Dreaming... it’s a perfect storm of my own affection for Neil’s work, the need for emotional honesty from characters who are about as far removed from myself as it’s possible to get; the need for verisimilitude in unreal situations; the need for veracity of detail with folklore, magic, mystery; and the tonal expectation -- because of the Sandman books -- for a particular standard of cleverness, story-symmetry and closure. Short version: the bar is high. It’s all entirely self-inflicted pressure, but my god. -- Si Spurrier

Welcome (back) to the Worlds' End...

Comments

[superboyprime]

All right, I get that the ur-god story is about how we use stories to make sense of complicated reality, and the sci-fi story explicitly spells out how it's about what gives endings meaning, but what's the second one saying? What's the take away supposed to be there?

[sadoeuphemist]

Stories exist largely beyond the control of their creators, and take on different meanings and persist after them.

[erikred]

When my kid was four, I managed to get through nearly ten iterations of "It was a dark and stormy night." When he was six, I barely made it to two before he mutinied.

By next year, I fully expect him to Dora the story (but I still get to finish the pint).